Hi everyone!
First, thanks to all of you who gave me input on this issue, I've found it
to be incredibly informative!
We've figured out what we believe to have happened: the pour spout had
degraded while it was sitting in the stock room, allowing air to enter the
container. This, combined with metals from the drum itself, led to the
formation of all the impurities that we found over time.
FYI: From the responses that I've gotten, it seems that many people have
seen this, and in some industries that use toluene on a regular basis, they
have to test their drums using ASTM method D3703 (Thanks Sarah!). And Edward
Rau has cited Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2006, 8, 4559-4562, which is an
article entitled "On the atmospheric oxidation of toluene". I do not have
institutional access to RSC journals, so I'm waiting on an inter-library
loan copy.
All of this information leads me to believe that this is something commonly
seen in older bottles of toluene. I'm thinking that it's not on a
peroxide-former list because the chance of having an explosion from this is
pretty non-existent.
Thanks again for all of your information, it's much appreciated!
Elizabeth Gregory
Laboratory Manager
Department of Chemistry
SUNY College at Brockport
Room 230 Smith Hall
Brockport, NY 14420
(585) 395-2210
Fax: (585) 395-5805
Email: egregory**At_Symbol_Here**brockport.edu

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